Saturn's atmosphere is composed of 96.3% hydrogen and 3.25% helium with the remaining half percent made up of trace elements.
Unfortunately Saturn's atmosphere doesn't match its spectacular ring system, unlike its neighbor Jupiter its cloud cover is rather bland in comparison.
Like Jupiter Saturn's upper atmosphere forms into bands but they are much fainter and larger than those found on Jupiter.

Saturn does possess one atmospheric feature that even Jupiter would be jealous of, a bizarre hexagonal shaped vortex at its northern pole.
The vortex is around 30,000 km across which is more than twice the diameter of Earth. At the center of the vortex is a huge storm which has
possibly existed for centuries, it is believed that the unusual haxagonal shape surrounding the storm is created by currents of air.

Saturn's Orbit

Saturn takes almost 30 years to make one complete orbit of the sun and rotates on its own axis every 10 hours 39 minutes compared to 24 hours on Earth, only Jupiter rotates faster.

Saturn's Temperature

The temperature at Saturn's upper atmosphere average around -175C (-285F). The temperature below the clouds gets considerably hotter.
Saturn's core has a temperature of around 11,700C (21,000F).

Moons

Saturn has 62 moons, 25 of which have a diameter of at least 6 miles (10
km), the most interesting of these are
Titan and
Enceladus.

Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons and the second largest in the entire solar system. It is also the only moon in the solar system to possess a significant atmosphere
and the only body apart from Earth with large areas of liquid on its surface.

Rhea is the second largest of Saturn's moons and the ninth largest in the solar system. It is mostly composed of water ice which explains its extremely low mass,
like our moon Rhea is tidally locked, meaning the same side is always facing Saturn.

Iapetus is the third largest of Saturn's moons. Like Rhea it is mostly composed of water ice and is also tidally locked.
Iapetus is notable for its striking differences in color, one side of the moon is extremely bright while the other is darker brown.

Origin of Name

The Romans named the planet Saturnas after their god of
agriculture.

Life on Saturn

Scientists doubt that any form of life could exist on Saturn.

The Rings of Saturn

Natural color image of Saturn's rings

The rings of Saturn are the most spectacular sight in the solar system and have fascinated astronomers for centuries. Science has not yet discovered how they formed but it is believed they are made up of debris from an asteroid or comet colliding with one of Saturn’s moons. They are mostly composed of ice with smaller amounts of dust and other particles.

They were named alphabetically in the order they were discovered and differ in thickness and width. Working outward from the planet the main innermost rings are D,C.B,A and F. The B ring is the biggest and brightest with an estimated thickness of around 10 meters and a width of 16,000 miles (25,000 km). There are also fainter outer rings G and E and the most recently discovered Phoebe ring, which lies 8 million miles (15 million km) from the planet. It is thought to be composed of debris from one of Saturn’s moons, Phoebe.

There are also gaps in the rings, the biggest of which is called the Cassini Division, named after the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini, the gap is almost 5,000 miles (8,000 km) wide. It was through one of these gaps that the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft had to navigate as it approached Saturn. Scientists at NASA held their breath but fortunately it managed to pass through successfully and continue its mission.

Missions to Saturn

Cassini-Huygens

Launch: October 1997Arrival: July 2004Agency: NASA/ESA (Europe)Summary: Cassini-Huygens orbited around Saturn as part of its extended 13 year mission to study the planet and its moons. The craft sent back new images every day
as well as studying the space environment of the Saturnian System. As the craft ran out of fuel NASA decided to send it on a collision course with Saturn in order to
avoid contaminating its moons, on September 15th 2017 the Cassini mission ended as it broke up in the gas giant's upper atmosphere.

Voyager 1 and 2

Launch: August-September 1977Arrival: August 1980-June 1981Agency: NASASummary: Voyager 1 and 2 made successful flybys of Saturn discovering the intricate structure of the ring system as well as sending back new information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.
Between them they took around 32,000 images of the planet.

Pioneer 11

Launch: April 1973Arrival: September 1979Agency: NASASummary: Made a successful flyby of Saturn studying its magnetic field, atmosphere and sending back pictures of the planet.